District receives bids on Coal Bowl playground

It remains to be seen how much a project to line and soil cap the Coal Bowl playground will cost Palmerton Area School District.

The district received three bids for the project on Thursday, but exactly from whom, and in what amount are unknown at this point in time.

Contacted this morning, Superintendent Carol Boyce told the TIMES NEWS the results are unknown because Barry Isett & Associates took the packets with them for review.

The board previously hired the firm to oversee environmental services for the Coal Bowl at a cost of $3,900.

Once the district recieves a recommendation from the firm, Boyce said the school board could award a contract when it meets at 7 p.m. June 15.

District officials have said the playground typically accommodates about 100 students for recess at a time, and it is also used heavily for a summer program hosted by the Palmerton Area Recreation Committee.

In November, the school board approved a $20,000 settlement between the district and TCI Pacific Communications, Inc., for remediation work to the Coal Bowl playground.

The payment is for remediation of the playground at Franklin Avenue, where soil samples conducted at the area by the state Environmental Protection Agency were found to have turned up elevated levels of lead and other metallic elements.

In July, the board announced that it would cost the district $11,000 to add new soil to the playground area. That price didn't include labor and trucking.

That announcement came after the board held a special meeting in June, at which time it hired Atty. William Schwab as legal counsel at a rate of $125 an hour at an amount not to exceed $1,000.

Charlie Root, an EPA project manager, informed the board at that time that levels of lead, cadmium and arsenic were found that were higher than acceptable standards.

Root also said at that time that while not an inhalation risk, the area was an ingestion risk due to the presence of the metals. He then recommended the district seek a professional environmental firm to look at the area.

The proposed new playground area is adjacent to the grass area around the existing macadam that Root said the EPA sampled back in 2002.

In April, 2009, the S.S. Palmer Elementary P.T.O. Beautification Committee began a project to refurbish the playground after it said the area sustained years of neglect.

But, work at the site came to a halt as officials awaited the results of the tests conducted by the EPA to determine whether the area - which had previously been used by the school's Environmental Education Club - was environmentally sound.